Jason and the painters have sanded and oiled and painted and waxed stairways to perfection. Rear rails were gift of Rob and Ellen, a find from New Orleans. Window opening in stairwell passage went unrailed for years. How did generations of Rudd children growing up here survive?

Lance Middlebrook is a decorative artist who spent days at the house, formulating colors to match what we found beneath years of wallpaper. His shade for the hallway we dubbed "Holleywood Green". It's a glaze that must be carefully layered and results in a breathtaking depth to the walls, showing traces of texture.

Debate continues about what to do with the front hall fresco. The plasterers repaired the wall where they had to, but left as much of it untouched as they could, without us having to worry about the wall falling down. Some of us want to keep it (I'm in that camp), some of us don't (Donald.) Restoring it would be quite an investment of both time and money. One option is simply to leave the wall as is. We decide to put off a decision until the floors are done. Procrastination is one of my favorite solutions to problems!

We loved the palette at Holleywood: warm greens, grays, champagnes. While Chris Brennan excavated the collections of Farrow and Ball, Ben Moore, Donald Kaufman and California Paints for complementary room colors, Lance went to work recreating original shades we wanted to match.

Lance is a decorative painter and colorist who was called in to match historic paints on the walls at Holleywood.

Lance created custom colors to match originals at Holleywood. He's pointing to the green we found under wallpaper in the entry hall, painted over the fresco in 1860.

Jason painted sample colors on strips to carry from room to room against changing light.

Lance mixed and matched grays again and again until sample trim matched original gray base molding on the third floor.

who we are

We are a couple of Upper West Siders from NYC who never set out to buy an old mansion in Connecticut. But the moment we walked through its massive front door, we were smitten. The info on this site is earnestly cobbled from a variety of sources, including the web. Please let us know if we've gotten something wrong, or if there's a story about Holleywood you'd like to share.